Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/367

JAMAICA JAMAICA

an island which the sun

Stays in his course to shine upon,

As if it were for this green isle

Alone he kept his fondest smile.

Long his rays delaying flood

Its remotest solitude,

Mountain, dell, and palmy wood,

And the coral sands around

That hear the blue sea's chiming sound.

It is a watered island, one

The upland rains pour down upon.

Oft the westward-floating cloud

To some purple crest is bowed,

While the tangled vapors seek

To escape from peak and peak,

Yield themselves, and break, or glide

Through deep forests undescried,

Mourning their lost pathway wide.

In this land of woods and streams

Ceaseless Summer paints her dreams:

White, bewildered torrents fall,

Dazzled by her morning beams,

With an outcry musical

From the ridges, plainward all;

Mists of pearl, arising there,

Mark their courses in the air,

Sunlit, magically fair.

Here the pilgrim may behold

How the bended cocoa waves

When at eve and morn a breeze

Blows to and from the Carib seas, 337